Well, that's pretty low

I have a vegetable garden (1crowdedhour kindly came over and watered our tomatoes while we were on vacation). One of the things I'd tried for the first time this year was watermelons. I tried the Square Foot Gardening method, where you train the vines up on strings, and I had set up a rather hilarious but certainly functional sling for the burgeoning watermelons, made of pantyhose. Yes, pantyhose. One pair of pantyhose to support each melon, and it was fun to watch them grow bigger and bigger.

Until today. I got home from work to find the pantyhose dangling limply from the frames. At first, I thought they'd slipped out of the slings and had fallen to the ground, but no. I searched around the ground. No watermelons.

Some nameless jerk walked into my garden, broke the watermelons off the vines (there were three of them) and took off with them. They weren't even ripe yet.

I don't think I should even say publically say what I hope happens to this person. It's probably unprintable.

The Culprit has been unmasked

About a half hour after I posted my last entry, my neighbor across the alley appeared at my back door with his five year old son. "Dylan has something he has to say to you," he said solemnly.

Yes, Dylan did, although it was obvious that he didn't want to say it. He looked a little to one side, as if he wanted to be anywhere but where he was, and but manfully 'fessed up. He mumbled, "I'm the one who did it." I had been really mad, but it was hard to wreck all the vengeance I had been nursing in my wrathful bosum for the previous half hour on a little sunburned snub-nosed boy, who couldn't even bring himself to meet my eye. "Well, it was awfully disappointing," I told him. "I had really looked forward to eating those watermelons."

After he apologized, it was determined that Dylan would use his allowance to buy us a watermelon, and he would do some yard work for us on Saturday. I told Dylan that under the circumstances, I would accept his apology. "I'm sorry, too," his dad mouthed to me as they turned to go. And I could tell he was. I thought the dad handled it well.

I have no idea how Dylan's father found out, but it was probably through my next door neighbor, who happened to be in her yard when I discovered the theft and heard my lamentations, and she put two and two together and told Dylan's dad. . I didn't ask Dylan, because I didn't think to until after he had left, but I'll probably ask on Saturday: why did he do it? The melons weren't even ripe. But the answer is obvious. He's just a little kid, and little kids have zero impulse control. They Do Not Think. I'll bet he grabbed the melons to lob them as bombs at other kids he was chasing through our yard.

Anyway, I'm glad to know what happened. It makes me feel a tad bit better to know it wasn't some stranger being malicious, it was just a young kid who was failing to use his brain for anything other than keeping his skull bones apart.

*Sigh* Still, watermelon from the store, bought with a little boy's allowance, won't taste the same as watermelon out of my garden.